I keep buying books.
Even though I have tons of books. I am preparing. I am thinking of my neighbor, in Portland, Oregon. Twenty years ago. She was married and they had children. Her daughter and my son climbed back and forth across the fence and played for hours.
I barely saw her. She barely left the house. Though I don't know, she may have worked. But she did not go out with friends and few visitors came. Their teen son babysat my son, under four, and brought his gaming platform. When we came home early we didn't find our son in his crib, and the sitter with five friends in the house, as we had with the previous girl. We found them both asleep sitting up on the couch, our son in the teen's lap, head against his chest, and the teen's head tilted back on the couch, out.
I only stood in the door way of their house once. The living room, piles of paperbacks up the walls and nearly over the last window. Only a crack of light coming through.
I too am preparing my walls of books. I am leaving the people who say they love me and have abused me for years with meanness and whispers and assumptions and lies. They were family. I repudiate them. I keep the family that loves me and treats me with love.
And I have the Beloved and an infinite universe to wander through alone.
And walls of books.